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jacobwilliamroy 1 day ago

Ask HN: What is the current state of the art in BIG (>5TB) cloud backups?

I'm talking about greater than 5 TB in size. Rclone looks really good because I can just give it a bandwidth limit, point it at google drive and fire and forget. But I'm curious if that is the best way to do this? What does HN think?

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vieews about 15 hours ago

Ask HN: Struggling founders, pls share your startup struggle

Founders,

what's been the hardest part of running or building your startup lately?

Whether it's fundraising, finding PMF, hiring, burnout, technical problems, customer acquisition, co-founder issues, runway stress, or anything else, we'd love to hear real stories.

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ramharts 2 days ago

Facebook has made it impossible to delete Pages – dark patterns everywhere

I'm honestly shocked at how bad the current Facebook interface has become. I’m trying to delete a Page I own, and the platform basically makes it impossible. The options have moved or disappeared, the Page Settings menu leads to the wrong profile, Business Suite doesn’t show the Page, and the “Access and Control” section doesn’t list it at all.

Facebook keeps bouncing me between: – personal profile settings – business portfolio settings – Meta Business Suite – classic Page UI

None of them give the actual option to delete the Page. It’s like the platform actively hides the feature.

And here’s the worst part: I AM the admin. I can publish on the Page. I can edit it. I can manage everything… except delete it.

I get that Meta wants to keep pages alive for engagement and ad data, but blocking users from removing something they own is straight-up abusive UX. No user should have to waste hours navigating four different interfaces to do something basic like “delete a page.”

If anyone has figured out the REAL way to delete a Page in 2025 with the new Facebook UI (which keeps changing), please share. Meta’s documentation is outdated, and their support is nonexistent.

This shouldn’t be this hard.

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throwawaybbbbbb 1 day ago

Tell HN: Cursor exposes side projects to your employer

I went to see my Cursor (the AI IDE) analytics and clicked a banner advertising their new company-level analytics dashboard. It now has a section “AI Edits by repository” that includes all the repositories used with Cursor, including your personal side projects. [0] I suspect they scrape the name of the repository from the list of GIT remotes, without explicit consent or notice.

If you're using Cursor with a company (teams, enterprise) subscription, information of all your code commits is sent to their API. This telemetry cannot be disabled and is available in a highly granular format in their API. [1]

The dashboard includes also includes information on when you were writing code. [2] The data is available in a highly granular format in their API. [3]

[0]: https://cursor.com/docs/account/teams/analytics#repository-insights [1]: https://cursor.com/docs/account/teams/ai-code-tracking-api#get-ai-commit-metrics-json-paginated [2] https://cursor.com/docs/account/teams/analytics#daily-usage [3] https://cursor.com/docs/account/teams/ai-code-tracking-api#get-ai-code-change-metrics-json-paginated

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bijan7 about 19 hours ago

Official gRPC Benchmark

From the official grpc benchmark, it seems the performance of the C++ implementation has gone down since 2023. https://grafana-dot-grpc-testing.appspot.com/?from=now-5y&to=now

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jMyles about 20 hours ago

Ask HN: Vitalik says that QC might break ECC before 2028. This is crazy, right?

Quantum computers haven't even factored a three-digit number yet, right? I don't have handy the equivalent in discrete log solution, but... even if somehow (??!) they gain the 4+ orders of magnitude for Shor's space computation, there remain major unsolved boring problems like error correction and cooling, right?

Or have there been some galaxy-shaking developments in QC that actually make this somehow plausible?

Some recent, relevant, major discussions I brushed-up on before posting this:

* Willow announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42367649

* Majorana 1 announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43104071

* OpenSSH statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44863242

* The case against Google's claims of "quantum supremacy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384768

edit: I do want to say, I like Vitalik a lot and I think he has a beautiful and friendly brain and heart; the few times I hung with him he has been cool as heck. This is not an anti-Vitalik post. More of a "where are we really in QC" post, which I figure some people here can summarize in fairly simple terms.

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mcdow about 22 hours ago

Ask HN: Have you ever seen a perfect codebase?

In my experience even the best software projects have a few skeletons in their closet, blemishes on an otherwise well-built project.

At the end of the day, we all have to build things that simply work and provide business value. Striving for perfect code is not the goal. But it does make me wonder: does perfect software even exist? If not, what's the gold standard?

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aniken about 18 hours ago

Why doesn't someone just send the Epstein files to WikiLeaks?

Maybe an ignorant question but just wondering why someone hasn’t already done this if they are concerned about people not properly being held accountable.

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pixelworm 1 day ago

Ask HN: What operating systems, apps, etc. had your favorite UI designs?

I enjoy looking at the UIs of older platforms or software. Something about that pixel-ish look appeals to me more than the modern look of UI.

For me, one of my favorites was the look of some of the later PalmPilot UIs. They were surprisingly good for a display of only 160×160 pixels. They may not look the best today, but they were very functional. In some ways, I actually prefer older UI designs. Modern UI components feel more complex and, in my opinion, lead to a greater number of bugs.

What are everyone’s favorite UIs, old or modern?

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clostao 4 days ago

Ask HN: Cloud providers are losing in favor of bare-metal?

Lately, I’ve noticed a new trend on X: Devs (and indie hackers in particular) are ditching cloud providers and jumping straight to bare-metal servers like Hetzner.

Honestly, I think the big cloud companies just haven’t kept up. Their services feel clunky compared to the standalone alternatives. Just try comparing Vercel’s dev experience to Amplify’s, and you’ll see what I mean. On top of that, AWS has gotten way stingier with startup credits.

Put those two together, and it’s no surprise fewer people are hosting their MVPs on AWS. It’s tough to stay under $150/month with a database and a server, while on bare metal you can grab 16 GB RAM for around $20/month.

- Do you think the cloud is actually losing ground? - And for those using bare-metal: how do you handle DB backups, CI/CD, and pulling logs? - Would you scale something using bare-metal servers?

[Carlos](https://github.com/clostao)

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keepamovin 1 day ago

Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like a 'manager' now, with AI?

I've been an "IC" for aages. Now with agentic AI, I basically am the orchestrator, approver, scheduler, big picture planner. I very rarely dive into the code in the weeds now, despite doing that full time for 10+ years (and having programmed as a hobby for 2 decades before that).

I Can get so much more done. I can approach things I wouldn't have taken on before because my natural limitations would have taken me so much longer to overcome. It's changed the entire way I exist. I have more time to think about the big picture things, not just in work, but in life. I feel more like myself, because I get to be in touch with how I actually feel more of the time, rather than having my head in that pure creative flow space. I still get into that, but it's for the planning, orchestation, rarely the code, or it's for something else unrelated to work.

I love the AI revolution. The biggest thing it's given me is time. I can literally move 100 to 200 times faster with current SOTA agentic tools, in my estimation. I feel like I'm "managing" a bunch of high performing, focused, energetic ICs. It can literally turn regular people into their own little labs. I love the AI revolution. It is so cool.

Anyone else feel this way, or can relate, or want to share their own positive experiences?

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spirovskib 4 days ago

An exposed .git folder let us dox a phishing campaign

This past Friday afternoon, a member in our Discord server reported a phishing email pointing to a fake login page.

We took up to research it and because of clumsy decisions by the attacker we got their GitHub and their operational Telegram bot.

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/FTy4mrH

Sometimes the attacker incompetence can be a defender's best weapon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The phishing page was a standard clone of an "email", unbranded anf generic service. A bit of gobuster reconnaissance and we got the site's .git directory publicly accessible and listing its contents.

Inspecting of the requests also got us the first Telegram bot token. This is the digital equivalent of leaving the blueprints to your entire operation, including past versions and deleted files, lying on the front lawn.

We pulled the repository, found automated deployments and multiple fake pages with different hardcoded Telegram bot tokens and Chat IDs.

With the source code, repo and the active Telegram bot token, we filed detailed abuse reports:

- GitHub: We reported the repository containing the phishing kit's source code. It was taken down for violating TOS.

- Telegram: We reported the bot using the provided token and chat ID, leading to its removal.

- Hosting Provider: The malicious site was reported and taken offline.

Lesson learned? Never deploy a .git folder to production. Even if you are a criminal.

Acknowledgement: This was a collaborative effort by members of the BeyondMachines Discord community. The crowdsourced speed and collaboration helped us take this down very fast.

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Arperb 1 day ago

Ask HN: What does "legacy code" mean to you?

I'm doing some research on how teams think about older codebases, and I'd love everyone's take on this. No wrong answers, just trying to understand how different teams or organizations define this.

Thank you in advance!

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davidguetta 1 day ago

Ask HN: Am I the only one thinking ChatGPT 5.1 Thiking thinks for too long ?

I mean ffs, code refactoring that took 1m30 before is now at 5m / 8m at each question.

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gooob 6 days ago

What is the most beautiful / highest quality code you've seen (or written)?

literal shower-thought i had tonight as i was thinking about how at work we all don't like dealing with our helm charts because the syntax and structure ends up looking so ugly and it just feels wrong (not to mention the multiple different approaches of handling kubernetes resources in multiple different pipelines.

i try to see beyond any initial repulsion to weird looking code because i know that it may be super functional. but it got me thinking: what makes code beautiful? what makes code "high quality"? (other than that it results in a working, performant, and robust software program obviously).

so i'm curious -- can you show me the best code you've encountered? it can be a small snippet or it can be a "slice of a library" or an architecture etc. have you written anything yourself that you are super proud of?

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raoarjun4 4 days ago

Built a Pomodoro timer for ADHD brains: always visible progress bar

One big problem I have with pomodoro apps: they disappear. Even when the timer's running, I forget about it.

So I built a macOS app that runs as a persistent, always-on-top sidebar. When you collapse it, it becomes a 3px colored progress bar.

That constant visual reminder helps my time-blindedness stay on track.

Curious if anyone else struggles with the same thing.

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al2o3cr 3 days ago

Ask HN: Why All the Indonesian Spam?

The "new" page with dead articles shown has about 5 submissions per page with Indonesian titles and spam contents usually containing a phone number.

Sometimes they're posted by brand-new accounts, sometimes it's "aged" accounts that have never posted before. For instance, this one created in 2021 has posted 12 times in the last 2 hours:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TheDarkLegend

(you'll need to have showdead turned on)

Is this the world's most misguided phishing attempt? AFAIK dead posts don't get picked up by any search engines etc...

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YuriKozlov 2 days ago

Meta-algorithmic judicial reasoning engine

We’re experimenting with an architecture for automated adjudication that doesn’t rely on rule bases or statistical prediction. Instead of encoding law as “if–else” rules or training a model on past cases, we model abstract legal reasoning as a meta-algorithm: a control layer that orchestrates several heterogeneous components — hard-coded logic, numerical modeling, and structured natural-language procedures executed by an LLM.

The core idea is that the structure of legal reasoning (which stages to run, how to select and interpret norms, how to balance competing interests, when to revise earlier conclusions) is expressed in a strongly typed pseudocode / meta-language. Some parts of this meta-algorithm are implemented directly in code (procedural checks, basic qualification, graph updates), some are mathematical (utilities, equilibria, fuzzy uncertainty), and some are written as high-level instructions in natural language, which the LLM interprets under tight constraints. In that setting, the LLM is not a predictor of outcomes but an interpreter of a given procedural script.

The system doesn’t train on case law and doesn’t try to “predict” courts. It reconstructs the reasoning pipeline itself: from extracting the parties’ factual narratives and evidence structure, through norm selection and weighting, up to generating a decision that can be traced back step-by-step in the internal graph of operations. The same meta-algorithm can work with different jurisdictions by swapping norm packages; we’ve tested it so far on a set of international and domestic disputes.

There is an early public demo here: https://portal.judgeai.space/

If you upload a small statement of claim and a response, the engine runs the full pipeline and outputs a structured decision document.

We’d be grateful for feedback from people working on hybrid symbolic/semantic systems, “LLM as interpreter” architectures, or formal models of complex decision-making. Obvious open questions for us are: how best to test failure modes of this kind of meta-control, what formal tools to use for checking consistency of the reasoning graph, and how far one can push this approach before hitting hard theoretical limits.

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coldtrait 2 days ago

Ask HN: Why does Y Combinator seem to be consistently funding AI slop?

This is one of the recent ones that I came across - https://x.com/ycombinator/status/1988366241460089118

Of late it looks like I've been noticing more of such pointless businesses and I'm not alone. What do you think?

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blutoot 8 days ago

Ask HN: How does one stay motivated to grind through LeetCode?

I was recently laid off at a big tech company after 10 years. And now I am facing the harsh reality of trying to crack leetcode medium/hard problems (something I never managed to do routinely while I was working at this company). Is anyone here in a similar situation or has been in one? If so, how do you keep yourself motivated to solve multiple problems a day, especially knowing you are actually never going to work on such problems as part of an actual job?

Edit: I need to practice leetcode because the interview process for almost every software engineering role (especially in the Bay Area) seems to require going through at least one round of coding challenge based on leetcode medium/hard problem. I did not call it out earlier because I thought this is a very obvious point. Perhaps, I should have clarified that I am mostly targeting software engg roles.

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rayyanabrar76 3 days ago

Ask HN: How do early-stage teams scale engineering quickly?

I’m Rayyan Abrar, Managing Partner at a small engineering team. I’m curious how founders handle sudden spikes in development work.

- Do you hire contractors, agencies, or full-time engineers? - How do you balance speed vs. code quality? - Any lessons learned or pitfalls to avoid?

I’d love to hear what has worked for you.

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CShorten 2 days ago

Semantic Query Engines with Matthew Russo (MIT)

AI is transforming Database Systems. Perhaps the biggest impact so far has been natural language to query language translations, or Text-to-SQL. However, another massive innovation is brewing.

AI presents new Semantic Operators for our query languages. For example, we are all familiar with the WHERE filter. Now we have AI_WHERE, in which an LLM, or another AI model, computes the filter value without needing it to already be available in the database!

```sql SELECT * FROM podcasts AI_WHERE “Text-to-SQL” in topics ```

Semantic Filters are just the tip of iceberg, the roster of Semantic Operators further includes Semantic Joins, Map, Rank, Classify, Groupby, and Aggregation!

And it doesn’t stop there! One of the core ideas for Relational Algebra and how its influenced Database Systems is query planning and finding the optimal order to apply filters. For example, let’s say you have two filters, the car is red and the car is a BMW. Now let’s say the dataset only contains 100 BMWs, but 50,000 red cars!! Applying the BMW filter first will limit the size of the set for the next filter!

This foundational idea has all sorts of extensions now that LLMs are involved! This opportunity is giving rise to new query engines and declarative optimizers such as Palimpzest, LOTUS, and others!

I am SUPER EXCITED to publish the 131st episode of the Weaviate Podcast with Matthew Russo, a Ph.D. student at MIT!

So many interesting nuggets in this podcast, loved discussing these things with Matthew, and I hope you find it interesting!

YouTube: https://youtu.be/koPBr9W4qU0

Spotify: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/ddUhVMmLoYb

Medium: https://medium.com/@connorshorten300/semantic-query-engines-with-matthew-russo-weaviate-podcast-131-131a42bbc521

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Meekro 2 days ago

Ask HN: Reason for the DDoS attacks on DALnet circa 2002?

Watching DALnet get almost completely destroyed by sustained DDoS attacks around 2002 was a formative memory for me, but I never did figure out why it happened, or what made DALnet more vulnerable than other IRC networks. Many of the simple explanations (warez? extortion? demo of botnet-for-hire?) don't really seem likely, and don't fit the facts.

Does anyone know what the story really was?

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mrjay42 2 days ago

Running a self hosted server with IPv6 is still a nightmare in 2025

First of, a disclaimer: I have NOTHING against IPv6. I find it great. I find also AWESOME that all my devices behind my ISP's router/modem/box (I'll just call it a "box"), are provided with a public IPv6 address.

1.

But then...you have mobile clients who use 4G/5G. And guess what, some telecommunication operators, in 2025, still do not support IPv6 over 4G. That means, that you're feel completely MAD as YOU can access ALL you services from "outside" your local network using a computer. But when you switch to a phone -> you dead. Then you enable the WiFi connection on your Phone and NOW your services are accessible again

2.

Some software DO NOT support IPv6. For instance Arma 3 server doens't support IPv6. Arma 3 is a 2013 game, which is still sold for a good price on Steam (27.99€, last time I checked https://store.steampowered.com/app/107410/Arma_3/), and the game is still played A LOT https://steamcharts.com/app/107410. So money is flowing, don't tell me this couldn't be fixed/updated.

And this is just ONE example.

3. IPv6 SHOULD be the default if available. That's the policy that should be implemented EVERYWHERE. I'm talking over the Internet, ok? I don't mean for our local networks at home (even if honestly, it's the same thing EXCEPT that the addresses are not easily memorizable for a human).

Windows 10 (up to date, even if, yes technically they're not updating it any longer), doesn't have IPv6 enabled by default! You have to do it manually, and THEN, sometimes, for no reason it's disabled again, or weirdly malfunctions in mysterious ways. (Now it's stable on my machine tho)

4.

All those little troubles add A LOT of time figuring out how could I solve my problem. The solutions, to this day are limited in some ways:

Buy a VPS, tunnel everything there (easier said than done, but doable). The problem is: I do not want to have to subscribe to a VPS just because IPv6 isn't supported properly.

Install some kind of cloudflare tunnel. And I hate that. I hate it. To set it up, I had to run some kind of docker container, that registered something somewhere, generated a URL that I clicked on, then I had to change my nameservers on my registrar's side and I have to keep a service running for this tunnel to be working.

All of those things are NOT in my control, and I cannot accept it as a "valid solution". And GUESS WHAT? Today, Cloudflare is down ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963949 ) -> BOOM perfect example, you delegate ONE service to the cloud -> all my services are inaccessible. And I'm not criticizing Cloudflare here, they provide a tunnel for me, for free, but the thing is, I installed that solution reluctantly.

5. What works amazing well with IPv6:

* Linux -> just works

* DNS, nameserver, registrar -> you set up the AAAA register for your domain/subdomain, boom job done. And this seems like a detail, but we all know the joke "it's always the DNS" as in "it's always the DNS' fault", but, get that, DNS (the protocol) works perfectly with IPv6.

6. I think about small businesses, small associations, NGOs, small clubs, etc. -> if they have the will to host their own services.

Because let's say that their data must be protected or simply, like me, they like to own and host stuff, because it is technically and intellectually satisfying to finally be able to use Internet as it was intended (thank you all the Gods of Olympus for my symmetric gigabit fiber optic connection) -> well, if their ISP is as stingy as mine and running out of IPv4 addresses, they're gonna end up having to do things in IPv6...and it'll surely be the beginning of a series of small technical nightmares for them.

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potatowaffle 2 days ago

Cloudflare is working again for my servers (US East)

Found out from my server logs.

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taariqlewis 3 days ago

Ask HN: Engineers working AI tools. Are you working more or less?

Curious whether AI tooling are making engineers more productive with more free time or more productive with even less free time.

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